Gil Dickmann, cousin of the killed hostage Carmel Gat, asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he would consider his late brother, Lt.-Col. Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu, "returned from Entebbe," during a speech at Habima Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
Dickmann spoke during a rally demanding the establishment of a state investigation committee for the government failures that led to the October 7 Massacre, and said, "He [Netanyahu] dared to say that he 'returned all the abductees who were in the war.'"
"Netanyahu, let me ask you: Exactly 50 years ago today, your brother Yoni Netanyahu, the late, set out to free abductees in Entebbe – and was killed there. Would you also say about Yoni that he returned from Entebbe?" he asked.
"Yoni gave his life to save abductees. Benjamin gave the lives of the abductees to save himself," he concluded during his speech.
What was the Entebbe Operation?
Yoni Netanyahu was killed during the "Operation Thunderbolt" (later renamed Operation Yonathan in his honor) in 1976, in which Israeli forces rescued hostages taken by a group of terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The terrorists had captured a plane from Air France traveling between Tel Aviv and Paris, diverted it to Uganda, and held Israeli hostages in Entebbe under the protection of the Ugandan Army.
The operation, led by Yoni Netanyahu, involved Israel's elite Sayeret Matkal unit and managed to rescue the 102 hostages of the 106 taken by the terrorists. Yoni, along with four other hostages, was killed during the operation.
Officials threatened hostage families to suppress criticism, says Dickmann
In March of last year, Dickmann also spoke out against the government about alleged threats by officials against families of hostages who criticized the government.
He made the statement in the Knesset Finance Committee, following up in a Friday X/Twitter post in which he explained that “very senior people in Israel” threatened and conned hostage families.
The threats and manipulations were made by those “whose sole purpose is to silence us, intimidate us, and give the government full credit to continue the war indefinitely and abandon the hostages in Gaza until they are forgotten,” Dickmann said in the post.
He explained that he was hesitant to speak out and is not willing to put the hostages still in Gaza at risk or reveal details while “the situation is so sensitive,” but added that “the truth must be told – so that you can recognize such a threat and expose it, so that those who are making threats now, sometimes publicly using code names, will not be able to continue this extortion.”
Among other threats and manipulations, hostage families were told that if they spoke out, their family member who was held hostage would turn into a symbol.
Eve Young contributed to this report.